10 May 2013 6:30 PM

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Obamastan

Fort Hood, Benghazi, the Boston bombings, Iran/Syria, Israel. The pattern is unmistakeable; the danger to America is exponentially increasing; the scandal is deepening into something nearer to a national crisis.

The Obama administration is playing down the Islamist threat to the US and the free world, empowering Islamists at home and abroad, endangering America and betraying its allies -- and covering up its egregious failure to protect the homeland as a result of all the above, while instead blaming America for its own victimisation.

What is coming out in the Benghazi hearings would be jaw-dropping if it had not been apparent from the get-go that the administration failed to protect its own people in the beseiged American mission where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his staff were murdered in 2012, then lied about the fact that this was an Islamist attack, and then covered up both its failure and its lie. (Apparent, that is, to some -- but not to the American media, most of which gave the Obama administration a free pass on the scandal in order to ensure the smooth re-election of The One).

But the administration has form on this -- serious, continuing form. After the Fort Hood massacre in 2009, in which an Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas shouting ‘Allahu akhbar’, not only was it revealed that his radicalisation and extremist links had been ignored but the Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies classified the shootings merely as an act of ‘workplace violence’.

Weeks after the Boston marathon terrorist atrocity, there is still no explanation of why the FBI did not act against the Tsarnaev brothers, despite having had one of them on their books as a dangerous Islamic radical after a warning from Russian intelligence; and why, as the House Homeland Security Committee heard yesterday, the FBI didn’t pass on their suspicions about the brothers to the Boston police.

Even now, the US authorities are playing down or even dismissing Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s extremist Islamic views. Whether or not the brothers had links to foreign extremists is still unclear. But what is bizarre is the authorities’ belief that if they did not have any such links, they cannot have had any religious motive.

Despite evidence such as Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s outbursts at a Boston mosque, where he denounced clerics' references to Thanksgiving and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as ‘contrary to Islam’, the brothers were described by Philip Mudd, the former Deputy Director of National Security at the FBI and the former Deputy Director of the Counterterrorist Centre for the CIA, as merely ‘angry kids’. Mudd told Charlie Rose:

‘They may be disenfranchised. They may have had a bad experience at school. They may not have friends, and they say, “Look, we want to do something.” This tactic of terrorism is a tactic of the 21st century.I don’t necessarily think these are real jihadi terrorists. I think they’re angry kids.’

You really do have to pinch yourself. How in heaven’s name can a guy like Mudd, with his background in so-called intelligence, possibly come up with anything quite so stupendously shallow? It is precisely such angry, isolated, disturbed kids who are vulnerable to Islamist preachers who target, groom and manipulate them -- whether in person or through the internet -- to believe that ‘Islam is the answer’ and that they are its soldiers engaged in holy war against the unbelievers.

The wilful and perverse refusal to acknowledge the religious nature of this holy war -- and worse, to lay the blame for such terrorism on the the society that is its victim -- is what lies behind the Benghazi scandal.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearings this week produced testimony from Gregory Hicks, the former deputy to the murdered Ambassador Stevens, that was simply devastating for the Obama administration and its former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton -- who infamously erupted, under questioning last January about the nature of the attack,

‘What difference, at this point, does it make?’

Well, Mr Hicks has started to provide the answer. Despite repeated calls for more security to combat the clear threat of jihadi attack on the US mission, Mrs Clinton’s State Department had farmed out its security to none other than a jihadist group. When the fatal attack started, Mr Hicks vainly appealed for fighter jets to buzz the besieged compound. As the Times (£) reported:

‘When a team of four special forces troops were about to leave Tripoli, at Mr Hicks's request, their leader had to stand them down because he was not cleared by senior military chiefs to travel. Mr Hicks said the furious officer told him: “This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has shown more balls than someone in the military.”’

Disingenuously, the Pentagon says in response that no forces could have arrived in time to mount a rescue. But there was more lethal testimony from Mr Hicks.

After the attack, the Obama administration claimed that it had resulted from a protest that had got out of hand over an anti-islam YouTube video. But Mr Hicks testified that it was known from the start that it was a jihadi attack which had nothing to do with that video. The Wall Street Journal reported:

‘Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Tripoli, recalled his last conversation with Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who told him, "Greg, we're under attack." Mr. Hicks said he knew then that Islamists were behind the assault. In other words, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's public claim at the time that an anti-Islam YouTube video spurred the assault was known inside the government to be false when she and White House spokesman Jay Carney said it.

‘Mr. Hicks said he briefed Mrs. Clinton that night, yet the father of victim Tyrone Woods says she later told him that the YouTubevideo maker would be “prosecuted and arrested” as if he were responsible for Benghazi. Stranger still, Mr. Hicks says Mrs. Clinton's then chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, ordered him not to give solo interviews about the attack to a visiting Congressional delegation.’

Mr Hicks further claims that he was instructed by officials not to talk to congressional investigators, and then demoted after he asked why senior Clinton aides had blamed the attack on a video protest. Again, officials have denied his claim of demotion. But the cat is now out of the bag. The Times (£) reports that an email has surfaced revealing that senior State Department figures — including Ms Clinton — knew within 24 hours that the group responsible for the Benghazi attack was linked to Islamic terrorists.

Meanwhile, from the beginning of this affair there have also been persistent questions about quite what the US mission was actually doing in Benghazi. Now the Washington Times has reported this:

‘A U.S. intelligence official tells Inside the Ring that the hearing and congressional inquiries have failed to delve into what the official said is another major scandal: CIA covert arms shipments to Syrian rebels through Benghazi.

‘Separately, a second intelligence source said CIA operations in Libya were based on a presidential finding signed in March 2011 outlining covert support to the Libyans. This source said there were signs that some of the arms used in the Benghazi attack — assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades — ended up in the hands of the terrorists who carried out the Benghazi attack as a result of the CIA operation in Libya.

‘The unanswered questions — that appear unasked by most congressional investigators — include whether the CIA facility in Benghazi near the diplomatic compound and the contingent of agency officers working there played a role in the covert transfer through Turkey of captured Libyan weapons or personnel to rebels fighting the Bashar Assad regime in Syria.

‘“There was a ship that transported something to Turkey around the time Ambassador Chris Stevens met with a Turkish diplomat within hours of his murder,” the official said. “Was the president's overt or covert policy to arm Syrian rebels?”’

Was it indeed. If it was, then Benghazi might turn out to be yet another and particularly terrible example of the damage Obama has wrought upon the security of America and the free world.

This is a President who, by persisting with the charade of negotiation with Iran over its race to manufacture its nuclear bomb, has allowed it to become the dominant power in the region.

That is why Iran’s puppet Assad, who has just accrued hundreds of Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists to help him win his bloody civil war, has been able to slaughter more than 80,000 Syrians and use chemical weapons against them -- while Obama himself may have ineptly armed al Qaeda inside Syria. For the Washington Times report goes on:

‘The official said congressional investigators need to ask whether the president indirectly or directly helped bolster al Qaeda-linked terrorists in the Jabhat al-Nusrah front rebel group in Syria and whether the CIA ran guns and other weapons captured in Libya to the organization.

‘“Every troubling Middle East-Southwest Asia country — Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and now maybe Syria — where the Obama administration made a significant policy push has gone over to Islamists that are now much more hostile to the United States,” the official said.’

Precisely.

The Benghazi attack was not just appalling in itself; nor was there merely almost certainly a catastrophic failure by the Obama administration to protect its people, and then a mighty cover-up of that failure. Benghazi also serves as a symbol of America’s tragic abandonment, under the Obama administration, of its historic mission to protect life and liberty both in its own homeland and in the free world.

Share this article:

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

I'm puzzled and disappointed by the poverty of this analysis. Clearly, the Americans (Obama and other) would like to have better relations with many countries whose governments and populations they have alienated over many years. They cannot achieve this improvement at the end of barrel of a gun, so are trying to use less military methods, at least in some places. Surely the endgame has to be greater encouragement of democracy, including in the Arab world?

I think this has been touched on before, but invective surely has to attain a certain standard if it is not to backfire. Have you ever studied an exponential function? If the danger to the US had indeed been rising exponentially, nuclear winter would have descended long since. Comic exaggeration is one thing. This regrettably just strips your invective of credibility.

1) Attacks against the US or US interests abroad are not primarily based on religious belief, but are overwhelmingly driven by anger over US atrocities across the world. This is well documented.

2) There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Iran is seeking to build or acquire nuclear weapons - the major intelligence agencies of multiple countries (including the US, UK, and Israel) confirm this - despite constant threats and acts of aggression targeting them that would suggest developing a nuclear deterrent would be a sensible approach.

3) The chaos in Libya that allowed the attack on the compound in Benghazi was a direct result of Western intervention aimed at regime change. If you arm and support multiple factions with various agendas/beliefs in order to overthrow a ruling elite then step back and leave them to it, instability and disorder and blowback is nit only possible, but to be expected. The lesson of Libya will not stop the very same approach in Syria, it would seem.

It is incredible that when faced with the crimes of the current president, his supporters choose to cry about the crimes of the one before! So, go after Bush legally. Stop complaining as if we should allow this disaster of a president to do whatever he pleases. Claiming that 'they' (Republicans) are willing to do anything to harm Obama is absurd. Did you miss the White House edits on the Benghazi talking points? The IRS going after the Tea Party? Are these all made up? BULL. It's called 'evidence'. Instead of whining about Bush, why don't you gather up all of your evidence and go for it? Leave the rest of us free to worry about reality.

Well said, Gary Oldham. Double standards and hypocrisy are the order of the day but there's a huge and lucrative Fox News/Tea Party market for this sort of thing and if you want a piece of that action this is the sort of thing you have to churn out on a regular basis. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Gary Oldham do you work for the White House? It's out there in full view, Obama and his minions are liars and are trying to cover their lies with more lies. Look at the public record there were no funding shortages for the security of our embassies. By the way the last 2 years of Bush's term the Democrats were in charge of the Congress/ money. Try some common sense, even the lowest of the low in govt should realize Sept 11 is a day to be on extra alert. Your democrat talking points are months old. Try to get updated.

Instead of 'obamastan' which suggests that Obama somehow willfully permits violent attacks in the name of Islam, I would argue the opposit is true. The Obama administration pursue a course of actions that can only be described as suppression of Islam. These actions include keeping open Guantanamo which houses exclusively one type of prisoners, assasinating Muslim leaders in other people's country (and even watched it on TV as it happened), supporting the rebels and prolong fightings in muslim countries and calling such violent uprisings as 'Arab Spring' - just to name a few actions we are aware of.

I'll disagree with all the criticism of Obama - he has been lumbered with totally foreign problems in totally uninteresting countries, while having a very important agenda at home to carry out.

With the USA slowly become energy self-sufficient, perhaps it is time to lift the travel ban to Cuba (people mixing can bring progress), and instead implement a ban on US Citizens travelling to Yemen and Saudi Arabia without special permission (e.g. perhaps for archaeologists and anthropologists, after being back-ground checked).

Your new slogan (soon to be seen on T-shirts across the US): "Think the unthinkable. Say the unsayable. Do the undoable." Mystics try to get away with such stuff to express the notion that the truth or the real or the authentic is ineffable. It doesn't really work for them. A contradiction is simply a contradiction. Of course, a more understanding and less pedantic reader would assume your slogan to be rhetorical. You are striving for uplift. Well, then, there's the problem of bad English. Soaring rhetoric works best when at least minimally literate (think of all the great speakers and great ads). The "undoable"? Do the undoable? What is the undoable? This raises a further problem. If you want to achieve uplift, you had better pitch it just right. If something is "unthinkable", the connotation is usually that it is atrocious. If something is "unsayable", the connotation is as often as not that it is a foul thing to say. A relaunch this early is no doubt difficult, but I do think you should re-think your slogan.

I cannot believe that the US allowed this man a second term as President. It should have started the alarm bells ringing when he ordered that details of his genealogy and birth status should be given the same status as an official secret and placed behind a disclosure ban of many years.

I would like to say that this could not have happened in Britain but I cannot. Even if it has not happened, it is only because there was a legal impediment rather than a lack of will to do so.

Where were all these concerns during the 54 attacks on American embassies overseas resulting in 13 deaths while George W Bush was in power.

There have been nine separate investigations of the Benghazi attack include one in secret session where intelligence that cannot be found public has been looked at as compared to three short hearings for the 54 attacks in George Bush's tenure and not one of these investigations has shown any wrong-doing whatsoever.

That is not say that faults have not been shown, but unfortunately for the ultra-wing narrative a lot of those faults trace back to a decision by a Republican dominated congress not to approve spending to implement improvements in security for a number of embassies identified as vulnerable throughout the world including the embassy in Benghazi. So if there is a lesson for America it is that partisan bickering over every word spoken and every cent spent is ultimately counter-productive.

Unfortunately there is a body now so absolutely determined to undermine Obama that they're as willing to lie about him as they were to lie to the people of the UK for twenty years about Christmas being renamed Winterval.

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the moderator has approved them. They must not exceed 500 words. Web links cannot be accepted, and may mean your whole comment is not published.